So today's topic is... And I just want you to be aware that it is not how to handle somebody else's guilty conscience, and it's not how to manage your conscience in community, of which the Bible has a lot to say about that. And we're going to devote part of our lesson in the future about personal holiness and community to handling differences of conscience both in issues where Christians disagree with each other, as well as where Christians overstep their bounds, sometimes to the point of even abuse, where they act like they're God in somebody else's life. And so, that's for another day. Today it's just basically you and your conscience. Of which, this is a huge problem. I think it is something that actually leads to psychological difficulties in many people. Because a conscience is a part of you and yet it's not you. There's something about it that seems to operate on its own and it has a hard time being controlled. And so we end up with internal conflicts where it's kind of me against me. And it's agonizing. If you live with a guilty conscience, maybe you've done so for a time or a season in your life, you know what that's like to just agonize over, I don't feel integrated, whole, all together. I feel at war within myself and very much at disrest. Remember David, when he cut the robe of Saul? It says in the Bible that his heart smote him. I mean, that's like a warrior term, you know, just, you know, come off and cold cock him or like slash him with a sword. I mean, he was pierced in his conscience over having touched even the robe of the Lord's anointed. And so if you've ever had that experience where you allowed yourself a liberty on something that you just don't do. conscience rears up with a vengeance in you and everything just screams at you says that you know wrong it was so bad two times I know in the New Testament it actually says that our heart condemns us One of them is related to the assurance verses that we looked at last week. I didn't actually get to it. In 1 John chapter 3 it describes that we should love in truth and not in word only. And then it describes assuring our hearts before Him in whatever our heart condemns us. That God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Our heart can condemn us wrongly on something that we haven't truly done wrong. It can condemn us wrongly on that you're not a Christian when you are a Christian. Or vice versa, it could actually affirm acting like you're a Christian when you're not a Christian. That's not the tension we normally feel like I'm describing right now, but I hope you can sense. It's me against me. Romans chapter 14 describes the blessing of the one who does not condemn himself in the things that he approves. And so if you've ever allowed yourself that liberty, and then afterwards regretted it, second-guessed it, and just beat up on yourself, we would say. The condemnations come. That's your conscience. And so we want to look today at how do we handle such an internal thing that is very much a part of what is necessary for personal holiness. So, this verse on the board, 1 Timothy chapter 1, describes how important a good conscience is. Paul says to a young pastor that the goal of our instruction, get rid of all the peripheral stuff, we want to boil down to what is good pastoral ministry. The goal of our instruction is love. From a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith, Now we saw the faith, we've seen that, how faith leads to hope which leads to love. Today we want to look at how a good conscience is needed for being truly loving. So, pastoral ministry, the ultimate goal is love, many verses say that. One of the routes to it is to help people in their conscience that they could have a good conscience. No guilty feelings, be freed from that bondage and tyranny of conscience in order to then not be preoccupied with oneself, but to be focused on other people. Let me just share a couple of ways in which this does not work, where a guilty conscience prohibits love. I'm really tempted to add a show of hands in this one. How many of you, don't talk about your spouse okay, but how many of you either are or know somebody who like has this cathartic confession mode? Like I feel really, really, really guilty inside and the way to get rid of it is I've got to just be public about it. And so all of a sudden you hear of something somebody thought about you, or did, and you were not aware of, and now they're confessing it to you, like, oh, please forgive me, I had this terrible thought about you, and I've been just envious of you for the past week, and you're like, I didn't know. And all of a sudden now you're tempted to think bad thoughts about this person that you had no idea, Because it really wasn't, it didn't need to be dealt with that person, it just dealt with God, handled and done. But some of us in the room, and I can definitely be one, are of this nature, when I feel guilty, it just builds within me to like, I just feel like I've got to say it to somebody in order to get it off my chest, get it out, because it's eating me up on the inside. You know, Pastor Rob and I have talked about this on several occasions. I mean, 1 Corinthians chapter 16 says, let everything you do be done in love. If this is not helping my brother or sister, button it. Deal with God. If you need to go to some trusted counselor, somebody that is a good friend or whatever, and talk it out there. But don't contaminate relationships with this cathartic confession mode. Because what it is, it's just selfish. I'm doing this so I can feel better. It's not building the relationship up, okay? That's a good example of how love comes from a good conscience and it can be destroyed with a bad one. Please. For some reason, I don't know what it is that, you know, we think that, you know, Facebook allows us to be, you know, more cathartic. I just got to get it off my chest and blah, you know, and it's like, no, okay. It's bad enough to go do it to somebody personally, but then to spread it around the world, literally around the world. I mean, wow. Okay, please. You're welcome. Okay. Another interesting application of this is accountability groups often go sour on this. Pastor Matt from Pine Ridge and I had a conversation that Equip hosted a while back and I was really impressed with his thoughts on that. At first, you know, the first time you get this accountability group together and you get this cathartic, like, let's just all be open, raw, honest and vulnerable. And it just feels good, like you always come away and say, oh man, that just felt good. Now I can be real with people. But then, now the relationship is defined by how open, real and raw you can be with people. And so, then all of a sudden it's focused on the problem. And you show up to the group and you feel like, I conquered the problem. And it's like, you feel good. And if you didn't feel like you conquered the problem, you kind of avoid the group or you come in with your tail between your legs and just... Christians are not defined by our sins. And I think one of the difficulties of these long-range accountability groups is they're defined by a sin. We are defined by Jesus. Our Christian meetings and Bible studies in small groups defined by Jesus can be encouraging because they can be a place of confession, but it's not there for confession, it's there for Christ. We meet together for encouragement. Otherwise they can quickly become shame-based, fear of man-based, and not focus on Jesus and looking to Him. I say that as a caution. To make a whole group about that I don't think is helpful. And so there's a couple ways in which we can kind of go about it wrongly. But let me give you this very, very plain, plain, plain way. Many years ago I read a book called The Cross-Centered Life and one phrase stuck out and stayed with me. Typically because, you know, it poked at me. And that is, the author said, Christians often feel like to be healthy, spiritually healthy, they should have a low-grade guilt. Kind of like perpetually having a low-grade fever. Because it makes you feel close to the cross. If every time, you know, you do something good, you still feel guilty about it because it wasn't quite up to where it should have been or the motives or, you know. And there's always something kind of lingering on your mind. It keeps you lowly, keeps you humble, keeps you near the cross. And so this low-grade guilt, very, very healthy. If this verse is telling us anything, it's that love, to be a healthy Christian, loving person, we need to have a good conscience. So we need to get rid of all the low-grade guilts out there too, okay? Today, before the Lord, let's see, ask Him, lift that low-grade guilt, let's deal with our sin, if there's real sin to be dealt with, and deal with the guilt fillings, if there's no sin to be dealt with, end up coming away with a good conscience. That's our goal. So how do we do that? There's only two options. Because you either have real guilt, objectively real guilt, like you broke God's law, you have truly sinned, you either have real guilt to deal with, in which case we plead the blood, or we have guilty feelings In which case we need to start challenging our conscience and start getting that instrument, very fine-tuned, delicate instrument calibrated to God's Word and off of whatever standard it is right now. And it takes sometimes months to get it off of one standard onto another, maybe even years. But it can move and it can change. And so these are basically the two options, to plead the blood for objective guilt, or to recalibrate the conscience, to challenge the conscience, if there's only guilt feelings and not something genuinely guilty. So to handle the first one, we're going to go to a very famous passage in 1 John 1. This is when John compliments the God is love with the idea, the truth, that God is light. 1 John mentions both and has one of the neatest phrases in the Greek Bible when it talks about eudaimia at the end of this first one, like not at all, there is no darkness in him at all. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you, verse 5, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Then look at how verse 6 begins, verse 8, and verse 10. Each of these are if statements. Followed by, so the if statements are all if we say, if we say, if we say. These are false believers making claims about knowing God. that are countered by, these are genuinely true believers. So talk about last week, Assurance of Salvation. This is a great Assurance of Salvation text, applying genuine second order, from using our language of last week, second order confirmation tests. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we would translate this no guilt. We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. This is a great text. First of all, note, blood really does cleanse. Blood cleanses. Now we know that blood stains. It's quite a graphic image because Revelation, written by the same author, describes those who have washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb. The blood cleanses in a very unique way. It cleanses through atonement, making a payment by means of a life violently taken, which we described a few weeks ago. So let's just note a couple things what does not cleanse. Good intentions and resolutions while they give us a sense of having cleared the bad spot in our lives and now we're resolved to do better and we're back on a better plane, back on the road again, those do not take away the objective guilt of something that has already been broken and damaged, namely God's honor. So only blood can take away a life taken can ultimately atone for, make up for sin. You already owe God your good intentions and resolutions. Obedience is something we already owe Him. It's not extra credit. Forgiving ourselves also does not do away with our guilt because we didn't sin against ourselves. It is a very proud individual who always has a sense of failing oneself. Like I just, I have failed myself again. I've not lived up to my standard. I have let myself down. That shows an extreme pride of being the center of one's life and conscience. Where really, letting God down, failing Him, and falling short of His glory is what real sin is about. And David describes how against you and you only have I sinned and done that which is displeasing in your sight, is evil in your sight. And so we don't forgive ourselves. Last summer I preached a whole sermon on Psalm 51, if you want to find that on Sermon Audio, and described how that's not a reality. Another one is self-flagellation, using a great medieval term, we would call it beating up on ourselves, also does not bring a good conscience. It may give a sense of falseness, but it doesn't deal and cleanse with the record of sin. It can't get rid of it. And so we feel like, you know, I just got to beat up on myself, make myself feel bad. Typically, those that are in the habits of sin will often beat themselves up over it, over it, over it. And then once they clear the memory of it and the freshness of it will go back to the kind of the mud puddle again and wall around. And then beat themselves up again and kind of becomes a habit of like cathartic again. I want to get myself feeling good on the inside. None of this deals with the objective state of guilt. The objective state of guilt has to deal with the damage, which is God's honor. We have fallen short of his glory because we cashed it in, Romans says, for something that was a cheap imitation. And so we have sinned and we lack it. And how does that glory come back? It's through the public demonstration of Jesus on the cross that our sin was placed on his back and God himself died in our place. Therefore propitiating God's wrath, turning away God's wrath and enabling God to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith. Two weeks ago, we described that at length. That's our justification. And so that alone can overcome real objective guilt. So here's what it looks like. Picture this with me, okay? A 29-year-old young father named Bob Snyder who abandoned his wife and four little kids in a city in the south, having just moved there in order to make three more weeks of income back at his engineering job in Minnesota, five states away. And of course, in this, you know, window of opportunity to make some money, they get that respiratory something or other, right? That preschooler respiratory, and they all like come down sick in a city where they don't know anybody. And I'm five states away. And so, I felt horribly guilty. Like, man, you... I mean, it was like, I was all over myself, you know, just to make money, and you let your family be down there, and you abandoned them to this, and like, and truly, I think it was bad. I didn't set my wife up for success, I didn't help her if I was gonna do this, it was like she was struggling, and I was not, whether I still am to this day a great husband, I mean, but it was like, at that moment, I was not a very thoughtful husband, alright? I was very much into myself. And so I'm up in Minnesota thrashing myself, kicking myself all around the house, you know, for like what's going on down there. And then it dawned on me. This is exactly why Jesus was whipped, pierced, and crucified. Because real sin deserves such a beating. And the devil is exactly right when he looks at me and says, you definitely deserve to be beaten up. But I have the opportunity to look back at him and say, I have been beaten up in Christ because I've been crucified with him. I've already been thrashed. I've already been beaten up. And it's an insult to his kindness for me to now beat myself up again as if there wasn't enough payment the first time. And so I chose to drop it. That was a very pivotal moment in my life. I can think back to that's when it came home to me. It's like, I just need to drop it. And it didn't feel exactly right. But that's the truth. The truth is this has been objectively paid for. So I need to drop it. Now, do you understand then how this can work? It's interesting. The blood of Jesus. If you try to, how many of you have been a teacher before? I know there's some of you. Okay, good. Back in the day, we used to have grade books. You put red marks and things. Being colorblind, I've switched over to blue pens, but red marks is how I started out. I remember seeing my grade book with red marks in it and picturing myself with God's big grade book in heaven and all the demerits of Bob Snyder. I'm like, look at them all up there. This book is filled with them. And me trying to like erase them myself. And then it dawned on me, it's like the blood of Jesus just washes the whole thing in red. So there's not a red mark can be seen anywhere. It's just coated and covered with the blood of Christ. Covered them all. That's how clean our record is. Nothing can be seen before God. It is truly fully paid for. I want us to look at the progression in these verses. The blood cleanses for certain kinds of individuals. It doesn't cleanse for the people that walk in the darkness. They lie and do not do the truth. Okay, it's not, this doesn't apply to them. It applies, and notice the progression, verse 7, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, So I live an open life before God who is the light. I live an open life before his word. I live in fellowship with church. I live in light of what the Bible is saying. I come to these kind of meetings, not with my defenses up, but as James says, with a meek spirit, to meekly receive the word implanted, which is able to save my soul. I'm not being defensive. So, Lord, speak to me even if it hurts. I walk in the light. I'm exposed because I'm in the light, being very visible. Second, verse 9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It does not say to who. I'm assuming to both God and to others as appropriate, not selfishly cathartic. But we're lovingly appropriate. If you and I are talking about certain sin in your life, I may bring up my sin, if it will help and strengthen you. Not because I got to get it off my chest, but because this will help relate that I'm a sinner like you. I've committed sin and you've committed sin and we both need a Savior. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, if Christians don't confess sins to each other, they're not really being Christians. Because if a Christian is anything, they're a forgiven sinner. If we never confess a sin to anyone, then are we really known to each other as being sinners? that's a church really a church at that point and so there should be an openness where love invites to talk about my sin or if I've sinned against you to confess it and approach you and then the last one is we have chapter 2 verse 1 we have an advocate Jesus the righteous this is the only time advocate is used of Jesus directly. It means a lawyer Somebody to argue your case to do the conviction work as it were So we have we have a lawyer in heaven who intercedes for us before the throne of God our high priest Who is there on our behalf? stands up in our name and makes our name good in heaven because we're in him and That's what a priest does. A priest brings the blood before the judge, and the judge then looks at the blood, which has atoned, that life has atoned, and then grants forgiveness, justification on the basis of that blood. So, I walk in the light, it exposes me, what it exposes, I don't hide, I confess as appropriate, and I know I have an advocate in heaven. I have a full payment in heaven that is not just like an end of life document that somebody could forget about, but I have a living person to argue the document in heaven. I have a living priest who rose from the dead to say, that's a sinner I died for. Those sins are covered. We have that in heaven. Okay? This is the requirement of real repentance. Psalm 32 has David describing delayed repentance. When he didn't confess and it was oppressive like a summer heat and his energy was drained away. If you've ever lived through a season like that, it's horrible. I hate it. I lived an entire year that way. Never confessed, didn't confess, didn't confess. I was the most miserable person. But then he describes when he confessed, how the Lord removed the guilt, how he removed the, you know, he cleansed him, and he describes the blessedness of the one to whom God will not impute iniquity, or we would say press charges, whose sin is forgiven, whose failure, we would say, is pardoned, and whose rebellion is removed, and whose God does not impress or impute charges. In whose spirit there is no deceit is the condition. And so the confession of sins, living an open life, a real repentance before God's Word is the condition to be justified. It leads up to faith, so this part of repentance. The other chapter that really talks about this is 2 Corinthians chapter 7, which describes the difference between a godly sorrow that leads to repentance without regret and a worldly sorrow, which I think would imply leads to repentance with regret. Like, I want to go back. It describes the zeal, the indignation, the great emotion of those Corinthians when they repented. They were done. They hated it. and they were done with it. They didn't pick it back up, pick it back up, pick it back up, pick it back up, kind of thing. They were done with it. And so Charles Spurgeon once described, I thought it was so well, he's like, he had a hard time trusting a dry-eyed repentance. I think there's something, you know, there's emotion involved, not mere emotion, a certain kind of godly sorrow that leads to repentance without regret. So what does that look like? think it looks like the difference between Judas and Peter because Judas failed at the time of the cross and Peter failed at the time of the cross but Judas destroyed himself in his deep grief in his remorse and is relenting and confessing I have betrayed innocent blood and he destroyed himself where Peter when he repented he jumped out of the boat and ran as it were swam to Jesus because he loved Christ in truth. I think that tells us that genuine repentance does not occur with the feeling of not living up to my own standards not in dealing with the results of consequences I don't like or failing myself and breaking rules versus a relationship that I value so intensely that I want and am eager to make that relationship right and I go back to the one I love in order to confess it and be open. How many of you remember when Peter didn't want Jesus to wash his feet? And then in a typical Peter moment said, you know, just give me a whole bath. And then Jesus said, those who have bathed, right, are clean and you are clean, but they only need their feet to be washed. Justification, that's the full bath. I am completely, I myself am clean. I am reckoned righteous before God. My confession of sin is not to get back into the boat of salvation, like confessing to a Catholic priest. My confession of sin is not to somehow stop God from being angry. God is no longer angry with you because of the propitiation of the cross. He is grieved, which implies he loves you. But he is not angry. He disciplines because he loves you. But wrath is removed forever from the Christian by the cross. And so the relationship between a Christian and God, we confess in order to restore the closeness of relationship and draw near to him, but not to remake a relationship that's broken as if somehow it stopped. Okay, I gotta quit being technical and just talk. So here's the deal. If your view of salvation is it's based on confessing sin and getting right with God again, I dare say you don't understand what real salvation is about. Real salvation is based on a permanent relationship described in terms of being adopted, of being righteous, of being a holy one who has access to a temple. It is described as a permanent, secure relationship. It is not piecemeal forgiveness. I do a sin and I get forgiveness. I do a sin and I get forgiveness. When I'm talking about repentance, I am talking about drawing near to God, to be close to Him again. I'm not talking about re-establishing a relationship as if somehow my sin divorced God and I need to get remarried to Him. There's a permanency to being justified and if we could start using that word again, that would really help. This thing on the bottom, I noted on the board here it says, if then, but not cause and effect. In logic class, an if statement is a statement of truth. If it rains on Saturday, then we will cancel the picnic. We're tempted to say the rain is going to cause the picnic to be cancelled. But it's not making a statement of cause and effect. It's making a statement of truth. If this statement is true, then this statement is true. If we walk in the light, then we have fellowship with each other and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Does not make walking in the light the cause of being cleansed from sin. It is a true statement. Those who are cleansed from sin are described as walking in the light. If this is true of you, that you walk in the light, it is true that the blood of Jesus cleanses you from sin. That statement is true. Walking in the light does not cause you to be cleansed of sin. The one that gets us is verse 9, because we treat it, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we feel like the cleansing is not going to come unless I confess. This is a statement of fact. The person who habitually and regularly confesses sin is the person whose sins are being cleansed. If this is true, then this is true. And they are being cleansed because they have a high priest in heaven. They have an advocate in heaven. Do you see how the last one just makes no sense? If we, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father. That's not cause and effect. Boy, if we sin, that causes Jesus to be our high priest. That makes no sense. If we sin, if this is true, this is true. If we sin, we have a high priest. Children, little children, you're God's children. I'm writing to you that you would not sin, but I'm telling you, you are God's children. And if you sin, you have a high priest in heaven, whose very self is the propitiation of your sin that took away your guilt. So, I just wanted to say that the whole idea of like, I confess and I get kind of like a slot machine and I get a little bit of forgiveness out. I put the confession in and get the forgiveness. That's not what these passages are saying. This is an if-then statement. If it is genuinely true, if your life is characterized by living openly before God and your mouth is open as appropriate and lovingly, And you are depending on Jesus the High Priest alone for your forgiveness, cleansing, and atonement. All these things are true of you. And the blood of Jesus cleanses. And so you can, you don't need your whole body washed. You don't need to get saved all over again. You just need to confess that draws near, that closeness again. And so you sense it and experience it. You already have the forgiveness in Christ according to Ephesians chapter 1. So, okay. To use the language of a couple weeks ago, we have to reckon, we have to reckon our justification. We have to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, having already been crucified and having already been risen from the dead. And then on that basis, we present ourselves afresh to God. We think of ourselves as justified and then we represent ourselves to God again. Okay. Now, this is not always advisable. And I didn't realize this until about a couple years ago when I was counseling in college, counseling college students. You guys that are in colleges, you guys are great material. I learned so much. And so I was just like, I was listening, you know, to this person going on and on and on about feeling guilty all the time. You know, and just, and realizing I'm dealing with a very perfectionistic soul. And always applying the blood of Jesus is not actually the solution to this. Which is kind of interesting. It was like, because I've always thought just, okay, you feel guilty, let's go to the blood. But going to the blood is not always the best solution. Because if there's no real guilt, we need to actually have truth in the innermost being according to Psalm 51. That's what God wants there. So if there's not real sin, let's go attack that conscience that is accusing me. And let's recalibrate it according to the truth. I think a lot of people have a tyranny of conscience. Several years ago, a pastor once said to me, he felt really bad for me. He said, I just feel really bad for you. You are so oppressed. I said, I'm not oppressed. I feel very free. Whenever my conscience says I do something wrong, I just don't do it. And my conscience says I did wrong, then I just agree with it and confess it. Whatever my conscience says, we go with it. I didn't even realize how foolish that was. My wife did. My children had to live with that conscience. I was painting myself into a nice corner. My conscience kept getting more and more severe, more and more particular, more and more intense, and I kept backing into a corner where I felt like I couldn't even rent from an unbeliever. The only way I could rent from people, back in mine, I was like 30 years old, was because Paul rented. He had rented quarters in Rome. And I said, well, Paul could do it, I guess I could do it. But I had no justification for it in my mind, other than like grabbing on to that. My conscience was just, it was my slave master. It was telling me this, and I would just agree and agree, and it was kind of like that bad habit that I had growing up. It's like, if somebody's upset with you, just say, I'm sorry, you're right, I did wrong. I'm sorry. Jesus didn't do that. Jesus was accused of having a demon and being crazy. And then he said, you know what, in John chapter 8, if I said that I don't know him, I would be a liar like you guys. But I do know him. And you can't tell me I don't, basically. It's like, I'm going to think truth. And if I haven't done it, I haven't done it. Now some of you are going, I can't believe this crowd. My conscience doesn't work that way. My conscience and I are pals because I never hear from my conscience. That's another problem. We're going to get to that one, all right? Paul actually lived that way. 1 Corinthians chapter 4 said, I know nothing against myself. But I'm not by that justified, he said. That's not what makes me a righteous man. Just because my conscience doesn't have anything to accuse me. What I want to do is talk about this dealing with the guilty feelings then that are false guilt. Psychologists recognize that this is very damaging. I mean, this is kind of what Freud built his whole house on, other than some very perverted things, it seems. But he built it on like, okay, guilt feelings are damaging, let's do away with all objective guilt, which does away with our dignity and God. That's not a solution, okay? Francis Schaeffer, in his book, True Spirituality, helped me out a lot on this, because he pointed to the fact that a lot of conscience problems, a lot of personal psychological problems are due to not dealing with the conscience well and getting substantial, what he calls, substantial healing in the conscience. And I agree that there can be substantial healings in the conscience. One thing he described as a perfectionist operates like this. When a perfectionist is on top of his game, he feels morally superior, feels very much at peace. When he's not on top of his game, the pendulum swings to the far end, he despairs. It's just this total inferiority feeling. So there's never an in-between, nice, healthy, at-peace mode. It's just always feeling self-righteous and everybody else is a loser. No, we wouldn't say that. And then on the other side, I'm the loser and everybody else is doing so well. And it just swings and swings and swings back and forth. And I was like, that is so true. He also describes those people that as if they can't have the perfect, whatever it is, marriage, they trash whatever good thing they have. If they can't have it perfect, they can't have it at all. It was insights like that that was helpful to me that this conscience thing is a damaging thing. We need to get at it. How many of you are familiar with the Diet of Worms? 1521 where Martin Luther stood before Charles V, right? And made that here I stand moment where those books were and I can't recant. He made the statement. that to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I'm telling you, it can be right, but it is not safe. This is dangerous waters. Paul uses words like twice he says people are destroyed. If their conscience is messed with, it destroys them. Ruined. hurt, torn apart. It's the kind of language that Paul uses. If I messed with your conscience as a bad counselor, I could destroy you as a human being and destroy your relationships. There have been dictators who have set out to raise up a whole generation like Adolf Hitler of those devoid of conscience. who actually had SS troops do horrific things to ruin their conscience and then tie it to the Fuhrer directly. It is a very delicate instrument, much like your eyesight. You protect it, and if I started poking, you would wince. Dealing with the conscience is like delicate eye surgery. We don't want to mess with this very, very unadvisably and irresponsibly. So let me describe to you briefly then what your conscience is. It's like your sixth sense. It's your moral sense. It's your moral consciousness or awareness of right or wrong. Some of you have very keen, kind of like a sense of smell. You have a very keen sense of wrong. Okay. It's like immediate. Some of you, you like have COVID. You've lost your sense of smell. You know, we didn't get this back. Okay. You know, it's like, it's, it's a sense. Okay. It can be all over the map. It is a word used two times in Acts, 20 times in Paul's letter, five times in Hebrews, three times in first Peter, Andy, Nassally, and Crowley, J.D. something, they wrote a book on conscience. It really helped me on this. Your conscience can be good, it can be clean, or it can be weak, wounded, evil, and seared even, as with a branding iron. What your conscience does, it's like a judge that's inside of you. Okay, just like your taste buds go, ugh. I don't want to have this. Okay, your smell, like my wife behind a big semi-truck putting out black smoke. You know, like, ugh, get me out of here. Okay, your conscience can bear witness. This is its chief function. It can bear witness. This is right or this is wrong. And it decides. Just like sweet or sour. It goes right or wrong. It can even tell you if somebody is a Christian or not. Twice Paul refers to this, that I hope that I am manifest to your conscience. That what I really am as a believer is manifest, made obvious to your conscience. He conducted his ministry so that he would be obvious to people's consciences. It also then can accuse you of being a Christian or not a Christian. It can excuse you or accuse you. It is the mechanism for that. But again, it could be wrong. I have been wrong. I can accuse somebody if they're not a Christian, like, I've been learning the last 20 years of my life to keep my mouth shut. You know, because I find out later, you know what, I think this person's a genuine Christian. I'm so glad I didn't say anything. You know? Or to find out, whore of whores, I don't think this person is a Christian at all. After they've abandoned their family and all responsibilities permanently after many, many warnings. It's like, wow. But your conscience doesn't necessarily tell you right, but it always wants to. Because that's what it's meant to do, right? It's meant to tell you right or wrong. Christian or not a Christian. And so it's this kind of, it's a judge. It even judges other people's liberties. I can't believe they would do this. Now we got to talk about this in community. How you deal with conscience with other Christians. But that judges other Christians as well as our own actions. Okay. Everybody got the idea what a conscience is? Here's what a conscience is not. Number one, it is not God. It is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is different than conscience. Sometimes I hear people say, well I think I'm a Christian because I have the convictions of the Holy Spirit. And I'm not so sure they have the convictions of the Holy Spirit. I think they have the convictions of conscience. I'm not sure what the Holy Spirit's been doing in their lives lately. Just because I live with a huge guilt complex every day of my life doesn't necessarily mean I'm a Christian. I've met somebody brought up in a very strict, strict, strict, you know, church environment. who had such a strong conscience, that person would not do anything it would seem like illegal. Because it would be so horrific to live with their conscience. I couldn't live with myself. You hear phrases like that. Well, that's not Christian. That's not faith in Jesus. That's just having a very sensitized moral consciousness. High, high spiritual sensitivity, which may not even be calibrated right. So the Bible describes your spirit as the lamp of the Lord searching the innermost parts of your being. It speaks with the voice of God. It talks and acts like it's God because it's a judge, but it's not necessarily God. It can bear witness with God. Like we see Paul, Paul says that his conscience, his spirit bore witness and his God bore witness. And he describes that to a believer, the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're children of God. There it aligns. The Holy Spirit is bearing witness and my conscience is bearing witness that I'm genuinely a Christian. But it could also be contrary to my conscience. Remember 1 John 3. where it says that our heart condemns us and we need to reassure our hearts on the basis of truth of what God says and assure our hearts when our heart condemns us because God is greater than our heart and knows all things. So your conscience could be accusing you of having done something horrific when actually you've done something very, very well. I met a couple that from a Jewish background, they came to faith in Jesus. Their words were, for the first three weeks of being a Christian, they felt like they had spit upon the graves of their ancestors. They felt horribly guilty. That's false guilt. Believing in Jesus, especially as a Jew, is the exact right thing to do. He is their Messiah according to the flesh. That's exactly right, and yet everything had been trained in them for so long that they felt horribly guilty for having betrayed their ancestors, when actually they had done right. Switch it around. Some people can think they're doing right before God, according to Jesus, by putting Christians to death. They think they're doing service to God. Our conscience can be horribly wrong. Can you see that? Here it's excusing persecution of Christians and here it's accusing somebody of coming to Christ. It needs to be retrained according to the truth and calibrated with what God's Word says. Romans chapter 14 is huge on this. The conscience is not the Holy Spirit. The conscience can be wrong. According to Romans 14, verse 14, Paul says, I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. That's a remarkable statement. Nothing is unclean in itself. Now it should be used lawfully, but nothing is unclean in itself. God, Paul quotes Psalms 24, saying, the earth is Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. Everything God has made is good and is given to us for our benefit. Nothing in itself is unclean. And Paul was convinced. Jesus even said in Mark 7, he pronounced all foods clean. But there are some, like he says in 1 Corinthians 12, that are accustomed to certain things. There are some that can't eat certain foods. And that Jewish couple, we actually served them pork that night. Not realizing it. And they were very sensitive to it. He ate a little bit and he excused his wife for not feeling good. You know, whatever. But I mean, consciences can still be very sensitized to certain things. And so Paul then goes on to him who thinks it is unclean, it is unclean. So if I think it is unclean and I go ahead and do it, I am sinning against my conscience, which is not the same thing as sinning against God. But if I think it is unclean, it speaks with the voice of God. And so actually in my heart, I think I am disobeying God. And so to do it, objective guilt and I would need to go to the blood of Christ because I have not done it in faith I did it doubting and I ended up condemning myself afterwards we're going to talk about how to change that later in another lesson but the thing we need to do here I'm trying to okay are we all in agreement conscience is not God You're willing to tell your conscience that? Your conscience can be wrong? Your conscience needs to be calibrated to the Word of God. It needs to be calibrated to truth. Psalm 51, God desires truth in the innermost being. It is faith, taking God at His Word, that calibrates a conscience. Whatever is done in faith, You need to be fully convinced in your own mind, the faith that you have, have as your own before God. Not because wife thinks so, not because husband thinks so, children think so, or parents think so, or pastor, or church, or whoever. Before God, you have to be calibrated to what God says. And so you train it as best you understand His Word. Say, this is my understanding of what God says and because God says it, I want to believe it, trust in it, and follow it. Okay. This is challenging. I hope you guys are understanding this. It is possible for your conscience to be wrong, it is possible even for your conscience, your understanding God's Word to be wrong. But if you take God at His Word and you base it on what God has said, you have to follow it until you get better light. When you get better light, then do the hard work and believe what God has said over believing your conscience. And let me give you the reason why. We must believe God. We must obey God rather than men. I used to think to go against your conscience is wrong. It is not necessarily wrong. It is wrong if you do it doubting and lacking in faith. What's right is to believe God and take him at his word. If you have clear statement of truth. Believing in Jesus is the right thing to do. Therefore, I will ignore my conscience that says I've spit upon the graves of my ancestors. It will hurt like crazy to make that change. It will be inner turmoil and torture. But you stay the course, you remain firm in your faith and say, God says this is right. For some of you, your past patterns of sin are so deep that you may never get to the point of being able to affirm all things are clean and to be able to actually affirm in good conscience that this object or this act is actually clean before God. I think Augustine, the church father who struggled with lust Bequeath to the Western Church his lust problem by making all sexual acts wrong is the feel of concupiscence. Like there's always something wrong in it. I think that's a huge sign of what happens if we have a past of ingrown sin ingrained in our flesh. Next week I hope to look at this at length. That it will train our conscience to be so scared and so sensitized that we wouldn't dare touch it. One of my friends for 10 years of his life was addicted to alcohol. He didn't want to touch it, he didn't want mouthwash that alcohol, nothing. I don't believe that alcohol in and of itself is sin. God has a part of his creation and Jesus made wine at Cana and I think it should be in moderation, period. Drunkenness is forbidden, period. But for somebody whose past sin has been so caught up in that, they may never get to the point of actually, safely even, being able to partake ever. That's one of the ways it's very difficult in conscience. Another one is if you have a very perfectionistic, ride yourself to death, do something religiously, always habitually doing something, your conscience is so geared to that you are your worst taskmaster. Think of the woman that throws like 14 dishes on the table at Thanksgiving time because everybody's got to have their dish and I'm going to be a bad grandma if everybody doesn't have their dish. Where in the Bible does it say you're going to be a bad grandma if everybody doesn't have their dish? And yet we do this to ourselves, right? I lifted weights for six years of my life as a teenager. Only time I didn't do it was when I had chicken pox for a week. Christmas, my conscience wouldn't allow me to not go without lifting weights. I did it, truly, the right word would be religiously. I was my own taskmaster. If I didn't do it, that wasn't a sin against God. That was a sin against Bob. That's not the same thing. How many things in your life have you burdened yourself with when Jesus says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light, but you've made yourself the worst taskmaster around because you've been your own boss. Let your conscience be tied to the Word of God, to what Jesus says to do, and no further. Allow the rest to be in liberty. Whatever is best and loving for someone else. You follow me? Don't continue to put burden upon burden upon burden upon burden. As if somehow this is higher spirituality. You will not be a loving person if you don't have a good conscience. Does that make sense? Psalm 130 and 131 came home to me when I read Schaeffer's book. Both are men with hope in God. Psalm 131 says I have human limits. There are some things too wondrous for me that my mind will never tackle and some things too great for me that my strength will never tackle. And I need to just accept my limits and hope in God and not feel guilty that I have limits. I have limits. But Psalm 130 says I have moral limits. If you should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? I will sin. And I can't hold myself to a perfectionistic standard of like, never, ever, ever, you can't always sin. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Hoping God that he is bigger even than my sin and will cleanse me with his great redemption. Next week I hope to look at perfectionism and progress from Romans chapter seven and chapter eight. And so may the Lord lead us and teach us. In his name, amen.